There has been a lot of talk in the news lately about Jerusalem being the eternal, undivided capital of the Jewish people. Which is all fine and dandy except for the fact that Jerusalem lacks that eternal, undivided capital feel. Instead of a national mall like Washington or an esplanade like Brasilia, Jerusalem tucks most of its government institutions aside, into a leafy compound between the Begin Highway and Gan Sacher that seems cut off from the rest of the city. Aside from the Prime Minister's Residence, which blends so well into the city that most who pass it don't even notice, it seems there are actually two Jerusalems, a Jerusalem of politicians/ bureaucrats and a Jerusalem of proles.

 

Two new design competitions initiated by the Jerusalem municipality aim to both integrate Jerusalem's government center into the rest of city and to re-imagine the city's Western entrance, which right now is a tangle of traffic arteries topped by a giant stringy bridge. The winners were Moshe Atzmon, who designed a new government center thoroughfare and Farhi-Zafrir architects, who envisioned a commercial and business center at the city's entrance.

 

Atzmon's plan calls for a green avenue, complete with waterfalls and parks, to connect Gan Sacher, the government area, including the new foreign ministry offices, the Hebrew Univeristy's Givat Ram campus and the Israel Museum going all the way up to Givat Shaul in the city's western edge. The plan would unify the spaces and bring them into the psychological space of the livable city. Atzmon told the newspaper Haaretz that the piecemeal way that whole part of town was put together worked toward its detriment, something he hopes to fix.

 

"I think the government complex suffers from too many different ideas," he told the paper. "There was the initial idea of a garden city, then someone decided that the Knesset needs to be the focal point, and after that Ram and Ada Karmi planned the Supreme Court thinking about all kinds of axes that never managed to connect. I think there is an extraordinary mix here of populations and uses."

 

A quick jaunt across the Jerusalem International Convention Center (Binyanei Hauma) from the bureaucratic heart of the city leads to the city's western gateway, currently dominated by the bridge of strings, the central bus station, the convention center and the confluence of number of large roads but not much else. A new plan by Farhi-Zafrir would put 30-story buildings next to the convention center and recreate Shazar as urban boulevard to produce a vibrant commercial district. In addition, a diagonal pedestrian road would run westward, helping to disperse the hundreds of thousands of people arriving by train into the city.